


Ready to Tell Us

by Odae



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, with kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25559137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odae/pseuds/Odae
Summary: Hakoda and Bato are finally ready to tell Sokka and Katara about what's been going on between them. And it's a huge surprise. Shocking, really. They had no idea! (They did.)
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 223
Collections: Bakoda Fleet Week 2020





	Ready to Tell Us

**Author's Note:**

> happy fleet week!

Sokka and Katara sat with their arms crossed at their end of the kitchen table, glancing at each other briefly before looking back at Bato and Hakoda.

“Can we help you guys with something, or are we just going to keep staring at each other until I have to go to practice?” Sokka finally asked, his gaze flickering between the two men in front of him. 

Hakoda cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something, looking his confident, commanding self. But then he winced and looked to Bato. 

Bato sighed. “Your father and I have something we’d like to tell you,” he prompted in his even tone. “That we probably should have told you a long time ago.”

Sokka and Katara looked at each other in alarm.

“Is everything okay?” Katara asked.

“It’s nothing bad,” Hakoda hurried to say. He and Bato exchanged a look of their own. “At least, I don’t think you’ll think it’s bad.” He held his hands out toward his children. “I just wanted to give you the time and space for your emotions, because I know we don’t talk enough as a family, and Bato did, too —”

“Hey, Dad, you’re kind of freaking me out,” Sokka interrupted. “So if we could move this along.”

Hakoda cleared his throat again and laid his hands on the table. “Right.” He looked once more at Bato, who took his hand. He smiled. “Bato and I are together. We have been for a while.”

The two men steeled themselves, waiting for Katara and Sokka’s reactions.

“Is that it?” Sokka finally asked.

“What do you mean, ‘is that it?’” Hakoda asked, shocked. 

Sokka froze, not sure of what to say. 

Hakoda watched them shrewdly. “Do you mean to tell me you kids knew?”

Sokka and Katara looked at each other again, this time disbelieving. 

Then Katara’s expression turned guilty. She delicately clapped a hand to her mouth and gasped. “My goodness,” she said earnestly, her eyes shifting between Hakoda and Bato to measure their reactions. “I can’t believe it.”

Sokka pulled her hand away from her mouth. “Katara, it’s too late, that wouldn’t even fool me!”

Katara smiled sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“All right, so you knew,” Bato said, clearly amused at the two children in front of them. “How?”

“It wasn’t that hard to figure out,” Sokka began, his tone guilty. “For one thing, Bato’s here, like, all the time.”

“Every day,” Katara said. 

Hakoda’s expression was still one of genuine shock. He turned to Bato helplessly. “But we were so careful,” he said.

Sokka and Katara could only look at each other again.

“...Were you?” Katara asked gently.

“Between the sleepovers where Bato didn’t even bother sleeping in the guest room, and you wearing his jackets all the time, Dad,” Sokka added, “you guys didn’t really leave it much of a mystery.”

Hakoda opened his mouth to argue, but Bato laid a hand on his arm to stop him. 

“They may have a point,” he said with a small smile.

Hakoda sighed and allowed himself to be subdued. “I can’t believe it,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He shifted forward suddenly. “Does anybody else know?”

“Oh, no,” Katara started, but Sokka interrupted her.

“Only everybody,” he said flippantly, starting to rise from his chair.

“Sokka, shut up,” Katara hissed, tilting her head at the shocked expressions on Hakoda and Bato’s faces. 

Sokka winced and sat back down “I mean, no?” He held up his hands guiltily.

Bato put a hand on Hakoda’s back. “Maybe you could tell us who ‘everybody’ is?”

Katara nodded. “Gran Gran knows,” she said. “And our friends, of course, because they’re always here, and, you know,” she nodded at Bato, “Bato’s always here. But I think that should be it.” She paused before her eyes lit up once more. “Oh, and the school nurse.”

Hakoda looked up from his hands. “The school nurse?”

“She has Bato in her records as our stepdad,” Katara explained. “Every time she called you about Sokka’s injuries, you were so busy at the station, Bato would be the one to come pick him up. And he had to come in so often that it seemed easier to just give her his number and shorten the process.”

“Hey!” Sokka cried indignantly. “I don’t get hurt  _ that _ often.”

“Sure,” Katara replied, rolling her eyes.

“That one I actually knew about,” Bato admitted to Hakoda, ignoring the siblings’ spat. “But it did just seem more efficient at the time.”

Hakoda’s expression softened, and he took Bato’s hand in his, entwining their fingers. “I guess when you explain it like that, it does make sense,” he said, chuckling at himself. He turned to his children and raised an eyebrow at them. “What I don’t understand is why you two didn’t say anything before.”

Katara smiled at the sight of Bato and her father’s hands on the table, and Sokka shrugged. 

“You guys didn’t ask me about Zuko until I actually told you about us, even though we were clearly up to something,” he said.

Hakoda shook his head. “Spirits know how hard it was.”

“The hickeys that boy gave you,” Bato said in wonder. 

“And you didn’t ask for me and Aang, either,” Katara added.

Sokka nodded. “We figured we could do the same for you,” he continued, pointedly ignoring his father and Bato’s remarks. “Just wait until you were ready to tell us.”

Bato and Hakoda smiled at each other sweetly before turning to look once more at Sokka and Katara.

“That’s very kind of you both,” Bato said.

Hakoda nodded. “This was definitely better, if very different, from how I expected this would go,” he said. He smiled warmly at them. “I’m lucky to have such great kids.”

“You are,” Bato agreed.

Sokka rose from his seat, stretching out his back, his arms in the air. “Yep,” he said confidently, “we’re just a couple of great kids. The best you could ask for.”

“This is so great!” Katara said, finally unable to contain herself as she rose from her own chair. She moved to the other side of the table to hug first her father, and then Bato. “You don’t know how relieved I am that we can stop pretending we don’t know you’re together.”

“Yeah, welcome to the family, Bato!” Sokka exclaimed, rushing over to hug them, too. “Even though you’ve really been a part of it forever.” 

Bato smiled lightly at the affection. Hakoda laughed at his son’s enthusiasm.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I really do have to get to practice,” Sokka said, releasing them both. He started out of the kitchen toward the foyer. “Call us when you’re doing something really crazy, like getting married!”

Both Bato and Hakoda froze, looking at each other with wide eyes and shocked smiles. Katara noticed and started backing out of the kitchen herself, grabbing a bowl of peeled lychee fruits from the counter.

“I’m gonna just let you guys talk,” she said with a wave of her free hand when they noticed her exit. “Aang will be here any minute, and we have a  _ lot _ of biology to review.” She spun around and ran out the door. “Okay, bye!”

Hakoda couldn’t help himself. “That better be  _ actual _ biology they’re studying,” he said with a grin.

Bato sighed. “You never stop, do you?” he asked. But he was also smiling.

“Never will,” Hakoda promised, pulling Bato toward him by the waist. “That didn’t go too badly, did it?”

“I’d say it actually went pretty well,” Bato said amusedly, looking down at Hakoda from his towering height.

Hakoda grimaced. “At least until that last moment,” he said. He shook his head. “I swear, Sokka somehow always knows just when to say the wrong thing.”

“I wonder where he got that from,” Bato deadpanned with a roll of his eyes. He paused before putting his arms around Hakoda. “Though  _ I  _ didn’t think it was the wrong thing.”

Hakoda faltered, looking up at him slowly. “You didn’t?” he asked, his voice low.

“No,” Bato said with a smile, “though after the rollercoaster you just went through, we can probably wait to talk about it.” He brushed a kiss to Hakoda’s cheekbone. “A rainy day or something like that.”

Hakoda hummed in response, his hands coasting up the lean planes of Bato’s back. “When’s the next day we both have off?”

“I’m not sure,” Bato breathed, “but I don’t have to go back to the station till 8.” They both glanced at the clock on the oven. “Which gives us four hours.”

“I like the way you think, Captain,” Hakoda said meaningfully, and he tilted his head to finally meet Bato’s mouth with his own. 


End file.
